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I usually drop off before 9 PM, but I knew I wasn’t going to fall asleep while Bernie Sanders was nursing a slim lead, so I stayed up until AP called Michigan for Sanders at 11:30 or so. I had TPM’s AP link, FiveThirtyEight’s live feed and LisB’s Facebook thread open.

During the reporting phase of the Michigan and other primaries, Nate Silver and Harry Enten took a lot of flak in FiveThirtyEight’s comment feed, which ran along the right side of the screen while Silver, Enten, Carl Bialik, Julia Azari, Aaron Bycoffe, Micah Cohen and others posted their thoughts on the left. Once it seemed clear that Sanders was outperforming the polls, Silver admitted:

One summer, I was one of four white college boys working as summer interns for the Corps of Engineers in Maryland. Most of our coworkers were white folk, but one engineer was Asian and one secretary was African-American. We had a very dignified lady for a boss, who treated us well. A lot of good ol’ boys from other departments would wander in with jokes or stories or just to shoot the breeze. We were taken aback when some hound dog joked about making our boss mother of the year if she’d only let him. She was an attractive woman, but they were both married, and not to each other.

Once there was a young man from a wealthy family. He studied hard at good schools, and when he was old enough, his father let him drive the company limousine so he could learn how rich people talked. So he learned to be very thoughtless towards other people, and even more obnoxious if they complained. And he learned lots of great words. Later, he wanted to be a real estate mogul like his Dad, and so he wore a suit and a colorful tie, and went to work every day, and made deals with people to build great stuff for very little money, like his Dad.

I’ve been called a political naif for supporting Sanders, and not wanting to accept Clinton as a consolation candidate. My first primary vote was for Jerry Brown, but I had to accept Jimmy Carter as the nominee. Carter was a very unpopular president, and though he now stands out as a very good and compassionate elder statesman, he was considered to have made a neoliberal bargain in the wake of the 1970’s oil shock, which probably contributed to the stagflation that followed.

FiveThirtyEight has a little chart on the right of their main page today [Thursday 3/3/2016]. They have established a target number of delegates that they feel each candidate needs by any given date to eventually capture the nomination:

My daughter and I spent much of Friday and Saturday in cosplay at Otakon, but I got to watch some of NBC's Olympic coverage — which in some events seemed more obsessively focused on Americans than ever.

Found this on the Dish. When I was a child, Redd Foxx was a guest on some talk show. He and the host were talking about hitting dogs while driving, and throwing out these huge numbers of dogs they had hit. I asked my mother why they would hit dogs, and she said they hit them by accident, but it sure sounded like they didn't care much.

I used to work in Central Pennsylvania — just PA to anyone from there. I was there long enough to realize that Penn State was both a revered institution and an 800 lb gorilla. I suppose that's true of other schools, but I have lots of family and friends who attended or worked for PSU, and still do.

Loyalty to Penn State and faith in JoePa continues to be very strong. On Saturday, in a stealthy 6 AM maneuver, PSU removed the Paterno sculpture, calling it a "distraction." The faithful are appalled. Even my liberal, union brother-in-law is resentful, claiming that the Freeh report is not the last word in the investigation.

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In the summer of 2016, as WikiLeaks was publishing documents from Democratic operatives allegedly obtained by Kremlin-directed hackers, Julian Assange turned down a large cache of documents related to the Russian government WikiLeaks in its early years published a broad scope of information, including emails belonging to Sarah Palin and Scientologists, phone records of Peruvian politicians, and inside information from surveillance companies. But by 2016, WikiLeaks had switched course, focusing almost exclusively on Clinton and her campaign.

WASHINGTON — Kara Young, a biracial model who dated Donald J. Trump for two years before he married another model named Melania Knauss, remembers clearly bringing up her race with the real estate tycoon early in their relationship. As with so many issues, he steered the conversation to celebrity.

Trump tweeted about his sadness over the loss of "beautiful" Confederate statues. He again equated a man who fought to create the United States with a man who knowingly fought o destroy the United States. Robert E. Lee could have led the Union Army. His sister's son fought for the Union. 40% of Virginia fought for the Union. Robert E. Lee chose to be a terrorist.

Trump champions the "Lost Cause". It is not surprising that he is unaware of why many of these Confederate statues were erected. Take the Robert E. Lee statue in Baltimore as an example. The statue was erected in 1948. The statue was meant to intimidate black soldiers and sailors returning home from World War II. It served as a reminder to those black men and women that white people were still in control

“Our country’s greatest strengths are the diversity of its people and the principles of equal dignity and inclusion that unite us all. There are troubling events planned in our state in the coming weeks. This is an incredibly painful and difficult time for millions of Californians. For those who are wondering where we stand – the ACLU of California fully supports the freedom of speech and expression, as well as the freedom to peacefully assemble. We review each request for help on a case-by-case basis, but take the clear position that the First Amendment does not protect people who incite or engage in violence. If white supremacists march into our towns armed to the teeth and with the intent to harm people, they are not engaging in activity protected by the United States Constitution.

There were no decent people marching alongside the white supremacists and Nazis. Decent people cannot work in the Trump White House. If you support Trump, you support a racist. You are an enabler. If you work for Trump, you work for a Nazi sympathizer, you are an enabler. Jewish people who work for Trump are working for a man who encourages anti-Semites. Blacks who work for Trump work for a racist who is attacking the black community. Hispanics who work for Trump work for a bigot who called Mexicans racists.

There are no decent political people hired by Trump working in the White House. (General staff like maintenance, kitchen staff, etc are excluded)

WASHINGTON — The renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement is off to a rocky start.

The Trump administration lectured Canada and Mexico on the failures of the current agreement at an opening news conference Wednesday morning, while behind closed doors negotiators began to seek significant concessions from America’s neighbors.

“We feel that Nafta has fundamentally failed many, many Americans and needs major improvement,” said Robert Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, who is leading the United States team aiming to overhaul the 25-year-old agreement [....]

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao stood shoulder-to-shoulder Tuesday with President Donald Trump, the same man who railed against her husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, last week and demanded that the lawmaker "get back to work" on health care."I stand by my man -- both of them," Chao said, when asked by reporters what she thought of her boss's criticism of her husband.

A Los Angeles-based tech company is resisting a federal demand for more than 1.3 million IP addresses to identify visitors to a website set up to coordinate protests on Inauguration Day — a request whose breadth the company says violates the Constitution.